electric wires flashed numerous messages North claiming a great victory for the Monitor.

The Monitor deserves our highest admiration. The fight of March the 9th was rightly pronounced by the Federal Congress "a remarkable battle.”

The Monitor did stand in the way of the Virginia, and save the Federal fleet from total destruction. She, however, did not save Washington, Philadelphia, and New York; for the Virginia could not have gone up there to shell the White House, as the Federal cabinet so nervously dreaded.

The Virginia staid at the Norfolk navy yard a month for repairs, especially waiting for her shutters. On the 11th of April, she came down to look for the Monitor and her twenty-five wooden consorts; but they could not be found. Again, early in May she renewed the challenge. Orders had been issued by President Lincoln and Hon. Gideon Welles, Federal secretary of war, "that the Monitor be not too much exposed."*

Some months later the crew of the Monitor applied to the Federal Congress for prize money for disabling the Virginia; but their claim was not allowed, the Virginia having been destroyed by her own officers on May the 11th, 1862.

The South is greatly indebted to the United States government for volume 7, series I, of the so-called War of the Rebellion records, as a casual reading of the first hundred pages will convince any reasonable man that the Monitor won no victory except in so far as she saved the Federal fleet from annihilation.

*Records of the Rebellion, vol. 7, series I.

The charge made by some Northern people that the South stole the Merrimac is too puerile to notice. The Gosport navy yard was abandoned by the United States government, and the Merrimac was scuttled and sunk by the Federals. The Confederates raised the vessel, fitted it up with armor, and called it Virginia.

O'

CHAPTER V

THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY

I

The Truest Patriots

F the great generals of the South, much has been

said and written. In the following pages, we our

selves shall make some attempt, though utterly inadequate, to outline the career of Lee, Jackson, and Albert Sidney Johnston, and to give some idea of the great deeds of Stuart, Beauregard, Forrest, Joseph E. Johnston, and other heroes of the Southern Confederacy. Of the private soldier and sailor, also, some record is found in history; and the present writer has attempted, though all in vain, to throw upon the canvas the outlines of that noble and tragic figure.

The women of the South, however, are but little noticed in our histories. They patiently await the historian's pen, the poet's song, and the sculptor's chisel; and all these will find in the women of the Confederacy a fit subject for their art and a theme fraught with inspiration; but history, art, and poetry alike will shrink in dismay from attempting a picture at all complete; for to do full justice to the subject is utterly beyond the power of historian, poet, painter, and sculptor; is, indeed, beyond the reach of human imagination.

President Davis said that the Southern women were "better patriots" than the men; and Stonewall Jackson in a letter to one of them said, "They are patriots in the truest sense of the word." No reflection upon the true men of the South was intended by these great leaders; but they no doubt meant that all the women were patriots, first, last, and forever, and that they had more unshaken faith in their cause than the men, and suffered more willingly for it.

If there were few spies and traitors among the men, among the women there were still fewer. If a woman ever led the enemy over bypaths to the rear of a Southern army, tradition is silent about it. While some men here and there are still spoken of as having sent information to the enemy, the women are far less numerous. The name of such a woman is a hissing and a byword, more execrated than that of Benedict Arnold; and her very house is still pointed out, almost as an object of execration.

The Quaker poet, Whittier, has immortalized the mythical Barbara Frietchie. For some Southern poet, the real Hettie Cary, Belle Boyd, and other heroines of the South offered abundant inspiration.

II

Wives and Mothers of Heroes

Willingly, gladly, though tearfully, the Southern woman gave her dear ones to the Confederacy. Filled, thrilled with "patriotic zeal," the maiden bound on her warrior's saslı, the wife girded on her husband's sword, the mother pressed

her son to her heart, breathed a few brave words in his ear, kissed him a hundred times-sending them forth to fight for state, for home, and for loved ones. In their vocabulary, there was no such word as fail. Hopeful, buoyant, confident, assured that their cause was just and that a just cause must succeed, they never dreamed of failure. Men might reason and calculate the chances of deteat; women, never. A man might argue that one ill-fed, half-cıad, half-shod, illequipped soldier could not hold out long against four wellfed, thoroughly-equipped men; but the women closed the argument with an incredulous smile, and reminded him that Lee was at the head of the armies and that God was in heaven.

The Southern woman was thoroughly informed as to the movements of troops, and as to the details of battles. She read the newspapers eagerly and greedily, would prefer a paper to a good dinner if called upon to choose between them; and, after the second year of the war, when both were scarce, she had less trouble in getting the paper than in getting the dinner, but bore her loss of dinner with Spartan fortitude.

On all subjects connected with the war, she always had her "opinion." She "lambasted" poor President Davis for not permitting "our" army to take Washington! She thought Beauregard was the "handsomest creature" and "so brave," and wished that he and Joe Johnston had let Jackson take "old Lincoln" prisoner in the White House. She still shakes her head wisely, and tells us what Southern